I would camp…

I would camp if I could bring along one of these. And a pound from here or here.

MORE: series opener

Heavily inspired by Coldplay’s XY album art I give you the opener for our current series entitled “MORE.”

Turns out animating colorful squares is (1) a lot of fun and (2) requires more effort than I would have thought.

Technical notes: I built a FORM particle system, and that worked for the counter but I ultimately needed more control for the opener animation. Enter painstakingly placed and animated dots. Eventually I did work up to sub-comps (see if you can spot the repeating patterns).

Christmas Offering Promo

I got to spend a little time in After Effects the other week, always a joy, and made a wintery promo for the NewSpring Christmas offering. You know, I could make Christmasy videos all year long. (and bonus: here’s part II of the video)

pt_Mutiplane script

What an awesome automated script for creating multiplane layers in After Effects. Of course, if you don’t work in After Effects, if you don’t like automation, or if you have never heard the word “multiplane” just disregard this post.

I also like how he uses the word “zed axis.”

DocuCam After Effects Preset

Camera shake. We all love it, right? Now you could try the “create a null and motion sketch on it and parent that element to your camera, dealing with the lack of z-position date” method. Or Kramer’s infamous motion track real handheld footage and use that movement to jitter your elements method.

Or maybe I could suggest using DocuCam from Weave Creative. It’s a free preset that I’ve found to be easy to use, functional, and in a pinch makes a big difference for little time spent. Give it a shot. Here’s an example.

posh yellow espresso machine

If I was overhauling my kitchen with an unlimited budget I would certainly outfit it with this sleek espresso machine.

One & Co.’s office space

It may be a little too sparse for my tastes, but I’m really intrigued by One & Co.’s office space.

Remember the 80s?

Thermo + cooler

When I graduated college and went to work full time my Dad got me a Stanley thermos just like the one he’s carried for years. The design is nearly identical to his, unchanged over the years. Today I came across this iteration on the set. Nice.

You don’t always have to innovate

Sometimes I run up against my own personal challenge of feeling like I always have to innovate, always have to create something new. But reality is I need to focus on communicating effectively. So in this piece I focused on the script, timing, and tone… and leaned heavily on Mr. Andrew Kramer’s lessons for the visual identity. You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel (though sometimes that’s fun), but you do have to succeed in getting your message across.

Hipstamatic app

This is just way too fun.

Punctuation series package

The moving visuals for our Punctuation series were heavily inspired by this piece, which I blogged a few weeks ago. How did we pull it off? The old fashioned way:

Design (After Effects, 15fps).
Edit clips in Final Cut / set to audio.
Export to JPEG sequences.
Print a contact sheet via Photoshop (File > Automate > Contact Sheet II).
Crumple.
Rescan (400dpi).
Reanimate (hold keyframes via position and rotation if you must know).

All told I had around 100 pages of printout across the open, counter, and promo. It looked something like this.

[OPEN]

[COUNTER]

10th Anniversary Event Opener

This piece ran after the counter and was used as a setup for the first song, Solution.

* This piece is free and clear to download. Do enjoy!

** Special thanks to Austin Booth who composed the original score.

Fix You

This is the video compliment to the band’s performance of the track “Fix You” by Coldplay. Over the past 2-3 weeks we have had boards set up at all of our locations where people could sign them if they were saved or baptized at NewSpring.

From there we photographed the boards (along with some of the people) and mixed these images together. This is the result.

Example of the piece in play


Example of one of the boards (this one from Florence)

Technical brief
Boards shot with anything from higher end Canon 5D’s down to standard issue point and shoot cameras. In After Effects, I manually masked out each exterior framing, applied a handful of Levels/Curves treatements to isolation the signatures, then utilized the Multiply blend mode (primarily) to lay on the blacks. The blood elements are from a stock collection of ink drops.

** As special thanks to Barron Cooley and the other slew of volunteers who did all of the photography.

*** The audio track is from the band’s performance recording, which I then used to gauge timing and pace of the song. It was executed as a soft roll video, one where we did not send a complimentary click.

Identity Theft promo

I’ll post a handful of our 10th anniversary content over the next few days. Here is a promo we ran for our upcoming series, Identity Theft.

If you’re into that sort of thing, here are some sketches from my whiteboard. I always find it helpful to jot down the script, ideas, comps, etc. to get a feel of how the piece will work. Not all ideas on the board make it in, but it’s a good starting point.

See through truck

Well, not exactly, but this is an interesting concept. It projects whatever the front of the truck sees on the back. I’m sure it’s in an effort to provide safety. Of course I’d be so fascinated I’d probably rear end the thing.

Like a Magic 8 ball for designers

What a cool idea. Stuck on something in your design? Not sure where to go? Head over here for some advice. Push refresh on your browser for a different opinion.

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Don’t Get Married Until…

This weekend marked the beginning of a new series, Don’t Get Married Until… For the visual package and opener Perry’s sole request was that it should an element of hip-hop. Listening to the 90s station the other day I heard some Heavy D and I instantly knew it was the right choice. The goal in this piece is to set up the series with “if you’re ______, then you’re not ready to get married.” Here’s the resulting opener.

Tomorrow I’ll post of the preproduction details (and a special preliminary video), sketches, and talk a little about the process.

5 lies of the devil – series package

For our current series, 5 lies of the devil, we decided to try a little something new. The idea behind the package was “devil vs. TRUTH,” similar to Spy-vs-Spy of yesteryear. The series package ended up quite suitable to DSKs and logo graphics due to the textured environments built within After Effects.

Joshua provided a great assortment of “devil parts” for me to animate, including the “devil jet” featured in the open and the yet-to-be-seen “devil crane,” which unfortunately had to be cut due to time limitations.

[SERIES OPEN]

[SERIES PROMO]

[SERIES COUNTER]

[LOGO, TREATED]
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[MESSAGE TITLE SLIDE]
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[TEXTURE BACKDROP]
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Typography sequencing

I see what they’re doing over at Meek.FM and I dig it.

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